Backers of a proposed initiative to increase a variety of taxes will have to start over after the state’s Title Setting and Review Board threw out the measure on a technicality Wednesday.

The three-member board was expected to decide whether the proposed initiative, backed by the liberal Colorado Center on Law and Policy, met the single-subject requirement in the state constitution.

If approved by voters, the proposed measure would require lawmakers to set up a graduated income tax, and it would apply a state sales tax to services, which now are exempt from taxation. The proposal also would repeal constitutional language that now prohibits a variety of other taxes, allowing voters to consider them.

The panel, though, never got to the single-subject question. Instead it voted unanimously to reject the initiative for consideration because backers had made a “substantial” change in the proposal from its last draft presented to legislative staff for public review and comment to the language presented to the title board Wednesday. The law bars “substantial changes” from one draft to the next.

In the original draft, proponents had called for imposing a 2 percent state sales tax on services. But in the draft before the title board, the language had been changed to make the sales tax on services 2.7 percent.

Carol Hedges, director of the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute, which is under the Colorado Center on Law and Policy, argued there was no significant change between drafts. Title board members, though, disagreed.

“This sure looks like quite a different proposal than what was before the legislative staff,” said Bill Hobbs, deputy secretary of state and chairman of the panel.

The board said the measure would have to be refiled with legislative staff, which Hedges said would mean it couldn’t come back before the title board until Jan. 15 at the earliest.

“I think there’s a really important discussion that the citizens need to engage in,” Hedges said. “We just pushed back that discussion by a month.”

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